


Pitch 15

by dasyatidae



Category: Climbing RPF
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Rare Pair, Rock Climbing, The Dawn Wall, Yosemite - Freeform, and they were ROOMMATES, being bad at talking about feelings, on a portaledge on a rock face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:18:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae
Summary: From the Meadow, they must look like insects scuttling across the rock. Like they belong up here, their ascent inevitable. From Tommy’s vantage point—crouched on a portaledge in the dark, his gaze following Kevin like a prayer as Kev clings to the barely perceptible features of El Cap’s Pitch 15—it’s anything but.(Because the logical thing to do after you watch a documentary about two climbing bros scaling an unclimbable wall is to write a love story about it and originate the AO3 tag. Help.)
Relationships: Tommy Caldwell/Kevin Jorgeson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Pitch 15

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man, when I started this on a whim _a year ago_ after watching The Dawn Wall, I did not expect to be posting it while sick and quarantined during a global pandemic, but here we are. Hope everyone's staying safe and reading lots of good fic. <3 If you want to check out this story but haven't seen the documentary, [the trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edfw9ip9sCQ) should give you enough context. :)
> 
> The usual RPF disclaimers, all hail the fourth wall, etc, etc. I know nothing about these humans besides what I learned from The Dawn Wall and a few Youtube videos; this story is pure invention. If you happened here by accident/know any of the people mentioned here, hit the back button. 
> 
> HUGE thanks to themainthings for the beta and to L for helping me out with the climbing terminology!

From the Meadow, they must look like insects scuttling across the rock. Like they belong up here, their ascent inevitable. From Tommy’s vantage point—crouched on a portaledge in the dark, his gaze following Kevin like a prayer as Kev clings to the barely perceptible features of El Cap’s Pitch 15—it’s anything but. _ Please, please, please, _ Tommy prays, _ let him send. _

Nine feet away, across the traverse of Pitch 15 that Tommy knows as well as his own body now, knows as well as his own battered left hand, Kevin makes a minute adjustment, the slightest shift of weight in his left toe as he reaches—reaches—and falls away from the wall, a jangling of gear and cursing.

The belay rope suddenly taut in his hands, Tommy lets out the breath he was holding. Tonight was supposed to be _ the _ night, but that was Kevin’s fourth attempt, consuming the last of his energy and more skin than his fingertips had to spare. Kev just hangs there, head bowed in defeat, shadows from his headlamp and the documentarians’ lights masking his face. Even with the waxing moon and the bright stars, the night is so dark. They could be in space or a deep ocean trench, twenty feet above the ground or twenty hundred. The whole world has shrunk down to the circle cast by their lanterns. Kevin and the wall—and Tommy, crouched here with bated breath, watching. Not for the first time, he thinks the treacherous thought: Kevin’s not going to make it across. He can’t do it, won’t do it. Pitch 15 has him beat. Even twelve hundred feet above the media tumult, Tommy’s not unaware of what everyone’s saying. How long is Tommy going to wait, sacrificing his dream of a decade? They’ve been on the wall for ten days of clear weather, but the weather might change, and every day spent up here is draining, wears them down a little more. Tommy should go on ahead. 

Tommy doesn’t care about the media circus or the filmmakers’ pointed questions the same way he cares about the traitorous voice in his own head—the voice that, fuck, Kevin _ knows _is there. Tommy can see it in the slump of his shoulders and the shuttered look on his usually expressive face, when after each attempt he hauls himself back to their perch, flopping down on the taut nylon next to Tommy. Years of dedication to this monumental project have demanded Tommy hone his sense of optimism as well as his body, so he pushes the doubt away. Kev can do this. They can do this. 

“Alright?” he asks, when Kevin’s made his way back to their platform at the start of the traverse. He doesn’t need to ask if they’re done for the night. Kev is clearly spent. Tommy’s looking forward to climbing back down to their base camp. He’s tired, now that the adrenaline of Kev’s last attempt is dissipating. Fuck, he was so close, Tommy could almost feel it, the sympathetic ghost movements. It’s been two days since it all came together for him—fluid, all of a sudden he unlocked some kind of sequence, and he had sent the pitch like it had been nothing. Thousands of attempts over the past six years distilled into those transcendent moments of hyperfocus. In the immediate, excited aftermath, he’d assumed Kev would be right behind him. If he could do it, Kev could do it too.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Kev says. He collapses beside Tommy, holding his hands spread and tense at his stomach, like a wounded creature. 

Tommy reaches out and squeezes his arm. “C’mon. We’ll get it tomorrow.” 

Kev gives him a look, and Tommy has to drop his gaze to not be blinded by his headlamp. 

“Tomorrow, Kev,” Tommy repeats. “You’ll get it, dude. That was really close.” 

“Alright, alright. Sweet talker,” Kev drawls, chest still heaving. He looks at the polished granite of the traverse with an exaggerated glower, mutters at it, “Fucker.” If he’s joking with Tommy, that’s a good sign. Tommy risks giving his arm another squeeze, as if such a stunted gesture might offer better comfort than his inadequate words. After another moment, Kev says, “Let’s go home.”

Home is two hundred feet below where their portaledge tents are anchored to the rock, a colorful jumble of gear bags and rope hanging in the five feet between them. Temporary. Just for a second, though, Tommy thinks _ home _ and imagines a constant place for him and Kevin. Like _ this _—bone weary camaraderie—but on the other fucking side of Pitch 15.

They take another rest day. For hours, they don’t speak. Kevin picks remnants of glue from his fingers, spreads them with Neosporin again and again, muttering to himself. Picks his phone up and sets it down, trying not to smear its screen with grease. Tommy tries to give him space. They each have their own portaledge, but they’ve spent plenty of nights over the past six years sharing the same four by six foot rectangle, lying head to toe against the wall, the majesty of the Valley spread out beneath them in a way Tommy sometimes forgets to appreciate. They know how to coexist in the same space and how to tune each other out when necessary. They afford each other what meager slivers of privacy are possible on a big wall climb. 

For so many years, it was just Tommy and the wall—a love affair so consuming it’s as if it’s reached back through his whole life, infusing the entirety of _ before _so that he can no longer pinpoint when El Cap stopped being a shelter for grief and became his reason for living. 

The teachers who once despaired of Tommy learning to read would be surprised, maybe, to know he sometimes reaches for Mary Oliver’s words to make sense of his obsession. _ Maybe just looking and listening is the real work, _she intones, describing an exuberant process of getting closer and closer to her subjects in the world, seeing them in their exquisite detail, and isn’t that what Tommy is doing? Listening with his whole body to the wall, making sense of every crack and fissure, every minute hold. 

Well, Tommy doesn’t _ read _ Mary Oliver’s poems, per se, and he would never claim to understand them, really, in a conversation with someone who likes books and poetry; but he listens to them sometimes, in the mix of audiobooks he plays during the long hours of off-season conditioning. Sometimes his brain gets tired of music and he wants the simpler rhythms of speech instead. Too much time around Kevin maybe, these last six years. KJ is a talker. He believes in Tommy’s obsession, but it’s never been a sacred thing for him. He’s happy to disrupt Tommy’s focus, to pull his gaze skyward to a funny shaped cloud or to their store of protein bars, to complain about how Tommy’s eaten all the chocolate chip ones and has left him with the peanut butter. It fits. After all, it was Kevin’s initial daring that brought them together—to just sit down and write Tommy an email. _ Sure looks like you need a partner. _

Now they’re twelve hundred feet up the Dawn Wall and crowds are watching them not just from the Meadow but on livestreams from around the world; they’re talking to the New York Times on the phone. Documentary filmmakers scramble up and down the route, shadowing them at odd moments, coaxing halting monologues from them between pitches. It’s crazy. But not heady enough for Tommy to forget that everyone thought _ he _was crazy, not so long ago. Throwing himself at an unsolvable problem. They can call him crazy now for gambling the dream, this year, when they’re farther up the wall than they’ve ever been before, but—but—

Tommy thought when they’d gotten this far, he’d feel elated, it’d feel perfect. He’d never imagined what a knife-twist it could be, the two of them separated by seventy fucking feet of rock. Tommy alternately curses and coaxes the wall in his mind. He’s never come so close to resenting El Cap. 

He’s going to say it. Tommy knows he’s going to say it. Another night, another push, Tommy with a front row seat to the heartbreak of Kev falling again and again. Smart thing to do would be to crawl onto his own portaledge, take a piss in a bottle, and call it a night. Let Kev be. Tackle the conversation in the morning, when they’re rested. Tommy’s never been known for being smart, though, just stubborn. He takes his piss, grabs his bedding, and follows Kev into his tent. 

“I’m passing out,” Kev says, but he’s got his ear buds draped around his neck, and he’s hunched over, his headlamp illuminating his torn up hands, smeared with blood over the white of the chalk. 

Tommy reaches over and clips his own headlamp against a red dry bag hanging from the tent’s ceiling, which makes the small space glow with a warm light at odds with how cold it is up here, exposed on the rock. Earlier in their ascent, there had been the day where wind had shrieked, blown straight up the wall in a twenty degree blast. Another day when all the moisture froze and El Cap twinkled like a frosted glass, like a salted margarita. Tonight, by comparison, is mild. 

“Let me help?” Tommy asks. Sure, his fingers are stiff, cold in the bones, from just sitting and watching Kev’s attempts, holding the rope, but it’s been a couple days now since he’s really climbed himself, so his hands have had time to rest. 

He thinks Kev’s going to argue, but he holds out his hands to Tommy abruptly. Tommy’s startled for a second before he takes them in his own, as if clasping them like something precious will be enough to soothe the rock’s damage. 

“Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

Nothing.

“Where’s your stuff?” Tommy asks.

Kev frees one hand and tosses another dry bag in Tommy’s lap. Tommy wipes Kev’s hands clean with an alcohol wipe, dries them with a bandana, and then begins the careful process of slathering each fingertip with Neosporin, wrapping each finger with bandages and tape. He has to use a razor blade to shave off a torn callus. Kev’s hands remain lax in Tommy’s as Tommy works the dead skin free. 

“Thanks, man,” he says, when Tommy is finally finished.

Tommy does his own hands, quickly. They’re looking pretty good today.

When Kev climbs into his mummy bag and lies down, Tommy turns off the light, unfurls his own bag, and lowers himself next to him, his head next to Kev’s feet. It’s completely familiar; they’ve curled up this way in their bags, side by side in messy nests of clothes and gear, hundreds of times over the past six years. And yet—and yet—tonight, Tommy can’t get comfortable. 

Their little home above the world is firmly anchored, of course, everyone and everything tied in, but still, from habit, you move with care up here. Tommy’s hyperaware as he sits up in his sleeping bag and pivots, lying down on his side so that he and Kev are face to face.

If Kev’s surprised, his voice doesn’t betray it. “I wanted to do that pitch so bad tonight,” he says, and the only yearning there is for the wall, not for Tommy. Kev didn’t brush his teeth, which should be gross, but the warmth of his breath is welcome on Tommy’s cold nose. 

“I know,” he says. “You were so close. I could feel it.”

“My hands are fucked,” Kev says. “It’s been days since you finished a pitch.” 

“Yeah,” Tommy breathes. “Well.”

Kev snorts, a little sound of discontent. Tommy thinks they’re about to get into the inevitable argument, but Kev switches tacks, asking, “Why are you sleeping over?”

“So I can listen to your music,” Tommy says. 

“Come off it. You didn’t really drop your phone. You’re just dodging that New York Times reporter.” 

“Did too. Sloppy. Fell right out of my jacket pocket. Probably killed someone. Again.” 

Kev laughs. Sometimes Tommy has to joke about Kyrgyzstan, and KJ gets that, thank fuck. 

There’s a rustling, and Kev’s tugging the cord of his headphones loose, out of his collar, and holding out one earbud. Tommy’s just got his hands warm in his sleeping bag, so he shuffles forward till Kev finds his face and follows the curve of his jaw up to tuck the ear bud under the knit of his beanie, into his ear. He’s clumsy with his bandaged digits. They’re really nose to nose now. Not for the first time, Tommy wishes they were just sharing a mummy bag. It’d be easier. Warmer, of course. Too much trouble now though to let their heat escape, to muck around and zip their bags together, even if Kev would be down. The music’s not too loud, the minimalist electronic stuff KJ loves, and Tommy’s about to open his mouth to spit out that familiar chirp—how can KJ listen to this while he’s trying to _ wind down, _to sleep?—when KJ blurts out, “What if I can’t get it. What if I’m stuck.” The ends of his sentences trail down. They’re not even questions.

“You’re not stuck.” _ We’ve come this far. Farther this year than last year. _“I did it. It’s doable. You’ll get it. It’s like a crossword puzzle. Once someone gets it, the answer’s out there. Everyone else who tries it can do it a little faster.” Tommy does not do crossword puzzles, but he’s heard this is a thing. 

“My skin’s pretty fucked,” Kev says, as if Tommy hadn’t just held his hands moments ago. “I’ll probably need to take tomorrow off.” 

“Yeah.”

A beat of silence.

“So, what, you’re just going to sit around all day with me? Another day, when you could be halfway up to the Wino Tower by now?”

“Yeah,” Tommy repeats, and he knows he sounds mulish, but he wants Kev to just _ get _ it. To not spend energy pushing at Tommy that he should be saving for the wall. _ You’re my partner. We’re a team. We do this together. _

Kev sighs, but he relaxes, just slightly. “Just like that, huh?”

“Yup. Just like that.”

“But if I don’t, then—”

“Then we’ll get it next year.” 

“That’s ridiculous. You’re—you’re so close.” 

Tommy _ knows _ . So close, closer than he’s ever been—than _ they’ve _ ever been—the past six winters of day after bruising day charting the wall, making sense of it foot by grueling foot, finally coming to fruition. Just nine days ago, they stood together at its base and stared up, and Tommy had thought: _ this is it, this is our year. _

So what. So what if he was wrong. 

“Seventy feet of rock, Kev, between us,” he says. “You’re going to do it.”

Seventy feet of the trickiest, smoothest part of El Cap between them—well, and, nothing between them, right now, tethered together sharing headphones. Layers of nylon and the dark and three inches, maybe, between their mouths. Kev’s lips, as dry and rough from the wind and the exposure as Tommy’s own. Tommy’s so, so bad with words.

They’re in the dark, and maybe it doesn’t matter how Tommy looks. Tommy’s not a looker. Statement of fact. His features are too sharp, his pale Irish skin always sunburnt; his beard comes in patchy and ginger, and his teeth are crooked because he never had time for braces. Doesn’t matter. The people in his life who have loved him _ that way _—well, fuck the euphemism, his ex-wife and the couple other people he’s awkwardly dated during off months—fell in love with his climbing first. That’s pretty much how his brain works, too: notice the climbing before the face. So that’s okay. 

KJ, though. He may not be _ handsome, _ but he’s cute. He’s got _ cheekbones _ and this boyish, rascally grin that never fails to draw people in. The photographers like to record Tommy flashing a pitch or describing what happened in Kyrgyzstan for the millionth time, but they like to snap shots of Kev reclining shirtless against the rock, sunning himself and his perfect abs, his dorky red sunglasses hiding the dopey expression he gets when he’s half asleep. 

Why was it so much easier with Beth, all those years ago? He was just a dumb kid then. She lay down with him like this one night—nose to nose instead of head to feet—and then she kissed him, and it kind of went from there. And, like, yeah, he’s aware most people have more complicated attraction metrics than _ smiles pretty _ and _ climbs good, _but, actually, he can’t begin to guess if he falls within the spectrum of what Kev would find attractive. Maybe he should, maybe he could finally just ask. But making a pass on the person in whose hands you’re placing your life while you’re anchored nearly two thousand feet above the ground in a four by six foot bubble, the eyes of God and the world and the New York Times fixed upon you—well, Tommy’s brave, maybe, but he’s not reckless. 

“‘M gonna turn off the music, kay?” Kev murmurs, clearly starting to drift.

“Okay. Goodnight, dude.”

“G’night, Tom,” Kev whispers, and it’s painful, but Tommy’s got to let the moment and their closeness go, let himself fall asleep. 

Tommy has a dream where the words come easy off his tongue.

Tommy has a dream where he clings to the rock on the far side of Pitch 15, and Kev, Kev hangs at the beginning of the traverse, and Kev shouts at him.

_ I’m never really sure if you need someone or if you need _ me _ . And you—I’m not sure you even know. At first I didn’t care. I saw that you’re the best and you’re doing this crazy thing that I suddenly, madly wanted to be a part of. And I saw this empty space where I could fit—a partner, you needed a partner. But now, it feels important. Why me? Why am I your partner? _

Because you asked. Because—because—all the cliches. That first day we met and hiked these monster gear bags up the back of El Cap, when I belayed you over the edge for the first time, you whooped and I watched your face really come alive in what was both a moment of recognition—_ here is someone who understands, who loves this like I love this— _ and also envy. Because, like, at that time, I was so fucked up inside, I had too much pain in me to have that passion. But I saw it on your face, and that was the first moment in years that I was like, _ oh, I want that, I’m going to get that back. _I wanted to believe it was possible.

That night, dog tired, you made rice bowls with kale and avocado, your camp cooking specialty, which goes really well with burritos, which is mine. You cracked me up with that story about the Passion Pit concert and asked me a million questions about my dad’s bodybuilding career, and you never once asked about Kyrgyzstan or Beth or _ why _the Dawn Wall. My cheeks hurt from smiling—which says something about how little I had been smiling, before—and by the time we went to sleep, I just knew. I knew we would get on. We would be a good fit.

They shuffle closer to each other during the night. It’s not a big deal. It happens when you’re sleeping in such a small space. You’re tied in, but still, you press into the middle and not out toward the edge of the world. Despite this, Tommy feels a jolt when he comes to with his face tucked snug under Kev’s chin, against his neck. 

“Mm, sorry, man,” he mumbles.

“Don’t move. Cold,” Kev responds, which Tommy half hears and half experiences as a pleasant rumble. “‘M still asleep.”

Tommy does his best to stay still, then, which is not really his strong suit. But if his body can’t fidget, his mind, at least, can race and turn. He tries, but he can’t shake the dream. Kev’s question, the _ why me,_ it’s all too close to how things fell apart with Beth. Like part of the emptiness he’s been trying to outrun (out climb) is this fear that there was no _ there _there, that they were never really in love. That it was this fucked up trauma response, clinging to each other, dragging them down. And thus, it follows, right, that Tommy doesn’t really understand love. Not only does he not understand it, he actively mistakes this fucked up antithetical dynamic for love. 

Tommy can climb the Dawn Wall. He’ll fucking throw himself at it, tenacious, until he conquers it—like he got out of captivity, like he learned to climb again better than before after he cut his finger off. That fire within him will compel him. But if Kevin leaves like Beth left, if they don’t make it to the top and next winter comes around and he’s got something better to do, someone better to be with, then what will Tommy _ have? _

When the answer to the question _ why me? _ is because _ you’re all I fucking have, _ well, what does that mean? Isn’t that desperation the opposite of real affection? _ You’re all I have and it’s good, so good, that you’re all I _ want _ to have—you and this amazing body and this amazing world, each full of limits to be overcome. _ Tommy used to think that’s what partnership was, that the apex of love was when two people loved something so much that they could love it better together.

But if he’s wrong, if it’s not, then what? 

Well, fuck. He’ll finish projecting the Dawn Wall and then he’ll have to find another mountain to throw himself at.

The crazy thing is if he _ could _ speak, if he could find the words, Kev would—he would eat that up. He’s so good at translating Tommy’s silences and his halting, awkward sentences. If Tommy could really tell him what it means for them to be together, to do this together, he would light up. And maybe he _ would _ say, _ Hey, it’s okay. No, it’s okay. I get it. You’re not wrong. You’re not fucked up. You’re not wrong about us, Tommy.   
_

Tommy would stay out in Yosemite year round, if he could. 

Not in the Valley—it’s been years, but sometimes he still doesn’t trust his feet not to take him on autopilot back to his and Beth’s house or to one of their old haunts. When they split, they decided to sell the house, and Beth moved out, explicitly ceding Yosemite to Tommy. She felt so guilty—leaving him for someone else, when he’d never, ever, even in their darkest hour dreamed of leaving her—that she made the concession. But she’d put Yosemite behind her so easily at the time he’d wondered if it wasn’t a sacrifice at all. If she’d been longing to go, if along the way she’d gotten tired not only of Tommy but of the climbing, too. 

No, not in the Valley. Tommy would stay on El Cap, if he could. 

Kev, he likes to get out of the Valley. He brought Tommy home once, to his mother’s house in Santa Rosa. This was a summer ago. Tommy could feel it, how close they were getting, and it was painful to leave El Cap when the season changed. But Kev had nagged him into coming back to Sonoma County with him for a week or two. 

“Not to work,” he’d said. “Rest weeks. Gotta let it all marinate.” 

Kev had never been out to Tommy’s place in Colorado but had somehow fixated on this idea that it was small and lonely and depressing. He wasn’t _ wrong, _ per se, but Tommy felt honor-bound to defend his tiny cabin. The glass of the French doors and the French press were both cracked, the water heater went out all the time, and it was a quarter tank of gas outside of town, but the place was alright. If he went back there enough times during the year, he could call it home. Maybe it wasn’t _ home _the same way Yosemite was, but for all its imperfections, it wasn’t that far off. It reminded Tommy of his folks’ place, of the simple stretch of childhood he’d spent tagging along after his dad up mountains and through the woods. 

Tommy haltingly explained this to Kevin as they drove around the dusty edges of the Bay and merged onto the 101. It was different, _ nice, _being with Kev on the road, lounging in the passenger seat and fiddling with the aux cord while Kev chewed on the straw of his In-N-Out milkshake, trading dumb stories back and forth. Tommy found himself talking about how when he was maybe eight or nine, he and his dad spent a spring making a circuit of the Utah parks, and in the moments they weren’t scrambling up boulders, Tommy had his eyes fixed on the ground, searching for bugs. He had a fervent wish to find a fat, fuzzy caterpillar, which he could maybe convince his dad to let him keep in a well-ventilated bottle. The harder he looked, the more elusive the shuffling bugs were. When he had finally found one over a leaf, thick and resplendent with orange fuzz, he hadn’t dared disturb it after all. Kev laughed and shook his head at this, seeming so fond that somehow Tommy just kept talking. Back home, once, in Colorado, he’d gathered up a hive of black ants as best he could, digging out a whole cylinder of earth with his spade and shifting it carefully, oh so carefully, into a huge glass jar. Not carefully enough. The ants were in upheaval, their tunnels collapsed, and Tommy got to watch them remake their world. They doggedly dug out a new network of burrows, pulling the chopped up apple and crumbled Cheetos Tommy sprinkled for them into the earth for their queen. 

His parents had taken him out of school by that point, away from the other kids who’d taunt him, sing-song, about being too small and weak to play baseball with them, away from the teachers who suggested, not bothering to drop their voices, that Tommy would be better served in the most remedial classroom. His delays were too significant. He couldn’t learn. So he got credit for the ant farm from his parents, once he brought it out after dinner and gave an impromptu speech about its intricacies, the ants’ life cycle and eating habits. Kev had no end of questions about this—what kind of speech? Were there visual aids? Did his parents give him an A?—and he cackled, tapping out a beat on the steering wheel, as Tommy wracked his memory for more details. He thought that his ant farm lasted a couple weeks before he lost interest in it and his father prompted him to return the ants to whence they came, the stretch of dirt between the wood pile and where they parked the truck. 

No bugs for Kevin. Kevin always had a dog. First Maggie the labrador, then Bo the pug and Twix Bar the one-eared shepherd mutt who could launch himself over the backyard fence and make the five mile trek to Kev’s middle school just in time for his lunch hour. It was Tommy’s turn to laugh while KJ recounted how he would try to smuggle Twixy into his social studies class, but they’d both end up in the office, where Kev was given detention and Twixy was given surreptitious head scratches by the receptionist. 

Kev was pretty popular in school, and his grades were alright, from what Tommy gathered, staring at the photographs on the mantle of his mother’s house. Kev and his mom were bustling around the house; she insisted on helping Kev bring their bags to the laundry room, telling him news about what sounded like the entire neighborhood all in a rush. There were a lot of photographs. Kev with a science project or with his arms around Maggie the labrador. Kev fastening the corsage to the wrist of a Homecoming date whose long brown curls spilled over her shoulders all the way to the neckline of her strapless dress. All-American teenage boy stuff. Maybe KJ would have played baseball or something if he hadn’t become a bouldering-obsessed gym rat. 

Back in Yosemite, Kev had rolled his eyes and promised they could visit Tommy’s hermitage next break, if Tommy would just agree to chill out in wine country for a while. But seeing how cozy and lively Kev’s home was, Tommy felt a pang of apprehension. KJ needed this warmth, the hugs and the fussing and the home cooked meals, and Tommy couldn’t take that away from him by dragging him out to his funky little cabin. He endured enough rough living on the wall with Tommy. He didn’t need to spend precious off time sleeping on a shitty futon somewhere with extremely spotty phone service. 

The second night, they were out at some bar after another monster dinner with Kev’s mom and one of his sisters, during which Kev had been given a metric ton of shit about how skinny he was while his mother snuck extra squares of lasagna onto his plate. As they waited for the bartender’s attention, Tommy stared at KJ like he was seeing him for the first time, and he felt a stab of reproach in his gut. KJ’s mom’s scolding was playing on repeat in his head. _ Too thin, pushing too hard, not taking care of yourself. _She had interspersed these admonitions with warm, wry smiles, shaking her head, and Kev had laughed them off, but her concern was real and warranted, too. Had he really been so focused on the climb that he’d run KJ ragged? Kev was a grown-ass man who made his own choices, sure, and his grumbling about needing an actual bed and food not cooked over a camp burner was as much a part of late season climbing as the two them catching the same cold—not something to overlook, but to take for granted, yeah, and it was just KJ, right? Surely if he were really struggling, he’d have told Tommy?

“What’s gotten into you?” Kev turned away from an animated exchange with the bartender—they had gone to the same high school, maybe? Tommy hadn’t really been following—and slid a tumbler of whiskey to Tommy.

“Nothing,” Tommy said. He spread a hand on Kev’s waist, over his ribs. Yeah, he could feel how perceptible Kev’s ribs were beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. His rangy body gone just slightly from climber leanness to gauntness. Still muscled, still strong, but now without anything to spare. 

“Tommy?” Kev was looking at him, dark brows drawn together.

“Sorry,” Tommy rasped. 

“What up?” Kev prompted.

“You look tired,” he said. A cop out, but it was harder than he’d anticipated, giving form to the concern that swamped his brain. “Did I—did we go too hard this year?”

Kev narrowed his eyes. “Nah, man. I’m fine. Why are you worried about that?”

Tommy shrugged. “Your mom said—”

“Tom.” Kev cut him off. “It’s her job to worry, she’s my _ mom.” _He looked down at Tommy’s hand on his waist and laughed. “Are you, like, feeling me up to see how skinny I am?”

“No!” Tommy let him go, took a deep, burning sip of his whiskey that he mercifully didn’t sputter out as it seared his throat. If they were partners, wasn’t it his job to worry about Kev too?

Kev knocked their shoulders together. “If it makes you feel better, I was planning on eating my weight in tacos while we’re here. You can make sure I stuff myself, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

Tommy _ did _choke on his whiskey. “Kev,” he complained. 

A few drinks later, he and Kev ended up at Las Palmas hoovering burritos nearly as big as their forearms, and at the end of the night, after a couple more drinks, eating fry bread tacos they bought from a food truck down the block from the bar. The night was just mild enough that people were hanging around the truck, perched on the curb with their floppy paper plates, but for some reason he and Kev ended up sitting side by side in the cab of Kev’s mom’s truck, which they drove into town because, Kev said, Tommy should have the full Sonoma County experience.

The fry bread tacos were pretty incredible. KJ licked his fingers, and Tommy found the crumpled bunch of napkins in the brown paper bag for him. They sat and listened to the radio while KJ waited to sober up enough to drive the dark country roads he seemed to know like the back of his hand. 

It didn’t happen, and they didn’t call a cab. Kev carefully took the truck around the block to a more residential area, where the area’s bungalow homes were mostly set back on half acres, and he pulled into an empty lot, fallow with grasses and poppies furled tight against the night.

“That’s my buddy Colin’s parents’ place,” he said, nodding toward the house on the adjacent lot, “they’re going to build here too someday”—he gave the word _ someday _ a flavor of _ they’ve been saying that forever but it’ll never happen _—“but in the meantime, we kids always have free rein to crash here.”

There wasn’t really enough gear in the half-cab backseat—a couple thick wool blankets covered in dog hair and beach sand that KJ tossed over the hard, corrugated plastic, a single sleeping pad and sleeping bag. 

“C’mon, get cozy with me,” Kev said, yanking off his hoodie and wadding it up for a pillow, “you’ll warm me up.” 

So Tommy did the same and wriggled close, until their shoulders pressed together. It wasn’t really enough to fit them both on the sleeping pad, but he wasn’t sure Kev wanted to, like, spoon him. He did his best to tuck the sleeping bag, unzipped like a slippery, unwieldy comforter, around them. They’d slept in less comfortable places for sure. 

Try as he might though, Tommy couldn’t settle. Maybe it did feel right to put his arm around Kev, just for, like, sleep geometry, comfort, not because—because—

“Are you trying to feel my ribs again?” Kev asked.

“No!” 

Kev huffed, shifted and pulled at Tommy’s shoulder until he was snug against Tommy’s back. When he whispered, it was against Tommy’s ear. “Why are you worried about me? I’m not going to quit.”

“You say that now. Next time we’re on the wall working the Dyno, you’ll be like, if you’re not putting pizza in my mouth in the next twelve hours, Tommy, you’re never going to see me again.”

“That was one time!” Kev protested. “It was a craving.”

“It was illuminating.” In the dark, Tommy didn’t need to hide his smile against the cool nylon of the sleeping bag, but he did. 

“I’m not going to quit,” Kev said again. He tightened his grip on Tommy, the hand he had tucked up against Tommy’s chest gripping his shirt suddenly. Tommy felt the dig of Kev’s blunt nails, just a small pain, and he didn’t want to pull away. 

“I know you’re not,” he said. Automatic reassurance, because he didn’t know that at all. “Is it still fun for you?” he heard himself ask.

“Fuck yeah,” Kev said, and then quieter: “I’m not going to leave you, bro.” Then he was feeling Tommy’s ribs—no, really digging in his fingers, which was, fuck, so ticklish, and Tommy was laughing and writhing and too tangled up with him under the sleeping bag to get any leverage or to get away—and KJ was laughing and laughing against the back of his neck. 

“You can’t know that,” Tommy wheezed, torn between the urge to roll away from the torment and not wanting to be out in the cold. 

“Yes, I can. Fuck you dude. Yes, I can.” Kev’s hands stopped roaming. He wrapped an arm around Tommy and resettled him tightly against his chest. “If you think I’m going to peace out before we send this thing and get hella famous, you’re crazy.”

Tommy didn’t think to say it back. Maybe he was too transfixed by the press of their bodies, both of them breathless and heaving but so quickly beginning to breathe in sync. Maybe saying _ I’m not going to leave you either _ seemed ridiculous, because the Dawn Wall was Tommy’s dream, and he obviously wasn’t going anywhere. He should have said it. It was important, just as important, after all, and Kev deserved to hear it. Not just when he was stuck on a pitch but every freaking day.

The KJ that teased him mercilessly while demolishing a half pound burrito without breaking a sweat, the KJ that tickled him till he cried and then fell asleep with his head on Tommy’s shoulder. _ That’s _ the KJ he knows, the guy who can laugh his way through any challenge. _ This _ stymied KJ—the man with the defeated slouch and an unfocused glare, visibly turning all his disappointment and irritation inward, while he shreds his fingertips on this one pitch again and again—he’s not only strange to Tommy, he’s heartbreaking. 

Tommy thought he was familiar with all the ways Kev could break his heart. He was wrong. This is the worst. Kev’s self-doubt, the heavy, preemptive weight of defeat. 

When Kev falls again and again, another day gone by, he turns those dark eyes on Tommy, pleading, and Tommy can’t say no, even though he wants to. Even though he promised himself they’d do it together or not at all. Even though he was so certain it wouldn’t come to this. Fourteen days on the wall. Tomorrow, they’ll move on—Pitch 16 for Tommy, and Kevin belaying him.

“Let me get you to the top,” Kev begs. “Let me do this for you.”

So Tommy says okay.

Tommy doesn’t want it to end. Maybe that’s part of the madness, his decision to climb down and around, a circuitous two hundred feet, instead of leaping the eight feet of the Dyno. 

When he makes the Wino Tower ledge, sticking the crux of the Dawn Wall’s last truly difficult pitch, he lets out a whoop like a war cry. The camera is trained on him, the documentarian prompting him to spout some platitudes. _ What does this mean for you, how do you feel_. Tommy can’t though. He knows he should feel hot with triumph, but he just feels alone, all his exultation bled away after a single moment. It barely feels like he’s gained the ledge, with KJ waiting beneath him. “We gotta get KJ up here,” he hears himself say, then say again. 

Sure, he’d thought it, he’d said it before—_it’s okay, we’ll do it together, we’ll do it next year or the year after if we need to— _ but now he _ feels _ it down to his bones. From the Wino Ledge, it feels like the climb is within reach, and the thought of doing it without Kev is sand in his mouth. An empty space in his heart. Unfathomable. 

Tommy’s used to being patient. He’s used to nurturing optimism and, when he comes up short on optimism, sheer bull-headed stubbornness. Kev is making a sacrifice, giving up on Pitch 15 and belaying Tommy to the top but it’s _ not _ a sacrifice for Tommy to wait for him. He’s gotta make Kev see that. He will. 

He feels at peace about the rest of it too, he realizes, as he sits across from KJ in his portaledge, going through the precious ritual of making him coffee in the thermos with the lucky purple carabiner. 

“Coffee for KJ,” he tells a camera guy watching them, and he wonders how obvious he is, if all the documentarians know. 

He loves Kev, and he’s going to tell him somehow. If not today, then tomorrow, or when they reach the top. He’ll be patient—just a little longer, until he finds the right words. 

But first, right now, he has to make sure KJ knows _this: _change of plans, they’re going back down to the traverse, they’re fucking getting him across Pitch 15. Tommy has to look him in the eye and explain. Tell him going ahead alone was wrong. _We do this together or not at all,_ he thinks. _We can do it. We’re going to get you across Pitch 15. _

What he says is, “You know, it’s cool, but—when I take, I just really want you to be with me.”

“Tom—I’d be holding you back again, man.”

“Yeah, well, I want to do it with you.” 

And Kev, Kev doesn’t argue, for once in his life; he must be feeling it too, the wrongness of El Cap getting the better of them in this way, splitting them apart. He takes the thermos of coffee, puts it down between his thighs, grabs Tommy’s hands and squeezes them. Says okay. 

It’s like a poem or a song, a sequence they know in their bones now—pull as hard as you can, put the heel on, drop the right hand in, heel back on, left hand down, feel your heart racing, breathe. Tommy feels like he holds his breath the whole time Kev is making his way across. He feels like he’s floating. He feels like he could fly across the traverse and throw his arms around KJ. Like he’s so happy he could do a wild thing and kiss him.

When Kevin clips in at the anchor point, he shouts, throwing his arms into the air. “Tommy! Oh my God!” He leans his head against the wall, overcome. 

Tommy speeds across to meet him, the documentarians pressing close at his heels. His heartbeat’s in his ears, his mouth dry. He’s acutely aware of the camera on them, and he hasn’t resented that intrusion before as much as he does now, when he has to content himself with the usual bro back slaps when he wants to just take Kev into his arms and press his face against his sweaty neck. But fuck, it’s better than he’d thought it would be, the two of them on the far side of Pitch 15. 

The pitches fall away after that—16 like nothing, Kevin nailing the Dyno, then 17, 18, 19. Kev catches up to Tommy on a foggy, quiet evening, and they hug on top of the Wino Tower ledge, reunited in their high points. Kev’s shaking slightly in Tommy’s arms from the adrenaline, the exertion of that last sequence. “Does it get any better than this?” he says, and Tommy thinks, _ no, how could it? _ and then _ maybe. _

Day 18, their last night on the wall, they make a new camp, a mere three hundred feet from the top. Just one portaledge instead of two—easier for one night, that’s all—and KJ lounges with a smear of chalk across his cheekbone, languid like a cat, practically thrumming with contentment. His sunglasses pull his dark hair back from his face, making his bangs stick straight up. The cameras are off, the filmmakers have scrambled down to their own camp, and it’s just him and Kev, the wall at their backs, looking across the Valley. 

“What if we just stay up here,” KJ says, exultant.

“Okay.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

But it isn’t _ just like that, _is it? Tommy’s hard won equanimity that’s buoyed him through the last few days threatens to fall away. There’s so much reality looming, about to intrude. His life after the climb, the next climb, the next adventure, inevitably pulling him and Kevin asunder. He doesn’t want to ruin the mood, but he can’t help but say, “Kev, when we get to the top…”

“Mm?”

“What are we going to do?” 

“Shots,” he answers easily. “Nah, champagne, probably.”

“I mean, you and me. If it’s over.”

“Uh uh.” Kev squeezes his hand. “C’mon, dude. Stay here with me. One more day. Look at how fucking pretty that is. We have the best view in the world right now.”

An answer that’s not an answer at all, but with Kev holding his hand, the uncertainty is less crushing. “Okay,” Tommy says, staring out across the expanse of evergreen and rock and sky. Be here now, stay here with Kevin. Tommy can try.

They sit side by side like that for a long time, until the light shifts, and eventually they can’t put it off anymore. Their last night on the Dawn Wall, holy fuck.

They don’t talk as they get ready to sleep. Tommy focuses on his breathing, keeps calling his itinerant thoughts back to the here and now. _ Cherish this: _ the jab of Kev’s elbow as he twists trying to get comfortable, his off key humming. Who hums along to a techno beat? He sounds like a malfunctioning appliance or maybe a really happy robot, and Tommy can’t lie, it’s hopelessly endearing. The night chill, the breezes rushing across the Valley, _ whooshing _ through the pines. _ Focus. _

When Kev lies down so they’re face to face instead of head to feet, maybe it’s not some breathtaking declaration it once was when Tommy was a kid, or even earlier in the climb when Kev was stuck and Tommy was, like, willing him to understand how much he cared. But it’s enough. Lying nose to nose, the rhythms of their evening routines settling down, they can finally talk about what it means for them, this ending.

“What are you afraid of?” Tommy asks, voice cracking.

Instead of answering, Kevin says, “I thought you might be afraid of the emptiness.” He says the words on a sigh, his breath gusting across Tommy’s face.

It’s now or never, and Tommy says, “I thought I was. I thought I would be. But it’s not that. Kev, I’m afraid of being without you.”

“You don’t have to be. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You don’t know that. Outdoor’s going to call, and you’ll be off to Australia or Patagonia.”

Kev snorts. “You too. You’re going to go right back out and find some other impossible rock to climb, become an alpinist or some shit, you fucking legend.”

It’s like their conversation that night in Santa Rosa, lying together in the back of Kev’s mom’s pickup truck. Tommy remembers the half-finished loneliness of it, KJ falling asleep and Tommy continuing the conversation with him in his head, being honest there but not out loud, not for real. He has to say it, he has to go for it now, he can’t risk the moment getting away. Can’t let this mess of stubborn fondness simmer inside him any longer. 

“I’d have to”—please, please let him say this right—“without you, I’d have to throw myself at something again, to keep my mind busy, but I don’t know if there’s a climb that’d be hard enough to make things better. El Cap, all the hell it’s given us, it hasn’t been enough to keep me from thinking about you, KJ. How much I—how much I—fucking fuck, I’m so bad with words.”

“Tom, shh.”

Nerves, mostly, but Tommy can’t help but laugh that _ he _ would be babbling his heart out and _ KJ _ would be the one to quiet him. KJ, sliding his hands to cup Tommy’s face, pressing their chapped lips together. Then again, licking gently into Tommy’s mouth, so it’s real, it’s real, not some brief, ambiguous gesture. Kev is really kissing him, here, on the edge of their triumph. Against the rock and beneath the bowl of stars above the Valley, the most beautiful place in the world.

“Can we—?” Tommy asks. 

“Yeah,” Kev answers, eager.

And they’re sitting up—careful, so careful—hands trembling, fumbling to zip together their mummy bags. Every time they’ve bumped elbows eating is worth it in this moment, when their respective right and left zip mummy bags zip together like two halves of one whole. 

Now KJ is hot against him—pressing, rubbing like he can’t get enough and needs everything now, writhing like a freaking eel against Tommy. Tommy’s not sure what he’s allowed, but then KJ has one hand around the back of his neck, holding him in a bruising kiss, and the other fumbling into his pants. Tommy can let him lead this; Kev is going where he’s happy to follow. When he manages to get a hand between them and on Kev, it’s ridiculous, maybe—he knows he’s inexperienced, and they’re both rough-handed—but fuck, it’s the best thing. 

“Oh my God, we can’t, we’re going to make a mess, how are we going to clean up?” He laughs against Kev’s lips, and Kev licks into his mouth like he wants to taste the sound.

“Don’t tease me, I don’t know, Tommy, how do you usually? Grab your bandana.”

“You grab your bandana. I only have the one.”

Kev grins, licks his palm, then twists his hand around the head of Tommy’s cock in a way that makes him shudder and gasp. He can barely manage to turn away and dig for his bandana in his bag.

“Guess we should have stayed head to feet,” Kev says while he’s rummaging, trying to keep his cool but no doubt failing. And the thought of _ that— _Tommy groans.

“Tomorrow night we can do this somewhere with more space,” Kev continues. “On a bed.”

“After a shower.”

“Oh, fuck.”

Tommy finds the bandana and turns back to Kev victorious, tossing it down next to them and recapturing Kev’s mouth with his own. His heartbeat is pounding in his ears at the prospect of _ tomorrow. _

“This is perfect though,” Kev whispers. “Being right here, with you.”

Tommy expects to go off right then from the combination of those words and the quickened slide of Kev’s hand, but it’s Kev who comes first, and Tommy can barely stroke him through it before he’s there too, spilling over Kev’s fist. 

They’re silent for a moment. Kevin pulls back just far enough to rest their foreheads together. “This is what I want,” he says. 

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut. “I thought you wouldn’t, that I was just crazy, that it was just me.”

“Nah, we both got it bad. Super obvious now.” Kev’s callused fingertips are gentle tracing the curve of Tommy’s jaw. “I should have seen it before. You’re too fucking stoic, man.” 

“I didn’t want to ruin anything.”

“Ruin it? Dude, this makes it everything.”

“I know.” It does. It really does. “But why?” Tommy croaks. “Why me?” He’s utterly spent, the usual babel of his thoughts whited out, yet he still has to know.

“You never gave up on me,” Kev murmurs, ducking his head and pressing a kiss against Tommy’s neck.

Tommy blinks away sudden tears. He _ couldn’t _ have given up on Kev. He believes in him, he believes in them. He’s wanted to believe in _ them _so hard. “What are we going to do tomorrow—after?” 

“Come home with me,” Kev says, “and we’ll figure it out.”

Tommy falls asleep with Kev’s leg between his knees and hands clasped between them and his face pressed into Kev’s lank hair. They’re sticky and gross, more mess between them than a single bandana can address. If Tommy had more energy he would freak out about how perilously close he is to having everything he wants, but he can’t. He has to save his energy for the last pitches of tomorrow’s climb. He falls asleep with Mary Oliver’s words in his head like a mantra, like a prayer—

_ Today again I am hardly myself. / It happens over and over. / It is heaven-sent. ….. Though, of course, I also know that other song, the sweet passion of one-ness. / Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the tumbled pine needles she toiled. / And I thought: she will never live another life but this one._

Atop of El Cap, the spray of champagne hits Tommy everywhere. He squints and wipes it from his eyes. It stings on his cracked lips, the pain another dimension of bubbly. There are so many people to hug, so many people clapping him on the back, shouting in his ears. The cameramen bobbing amidst the crowd, grinning too. The New York Times reporter wiping tears from his eyes.

And there’s the vista, the edge of El Cap. They came from _ there,_ they came all the way up that wall, holy fuck.

Tommy meets KJ’s eyes across the celebration—crinkling in a smile not for the cameras, a smile just for him. He feels, for the first time in a long time, his feet are on solid ground. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [vaguely on tumblr](http://coffeecupandcorgi.tumblr.com) if you wanna say hi!


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